It occurred to him that in his new role as a spy/saboteur/secret agent, he probably should put the watch away and wear one more appropriate to an oil industry executive.
That man is obviously a secret agent. You can tell by his watch!
But he had a strange, strong emotional reluctance to take it off. In a sense, the Hamilton and the Half Wellington boots he was wearing were his last connection with VMF-229, with Henderson and Guadalcanal, with the Corps, with Francis Xavier Sullivan. It was a connection he didn’t want to break.
From the beginning in the hotel room in Los Angeles, he’d had doubts about the whole OSS operation. These had not only not diminished, they had grown more defined. He found it difficult to believe that the United States of America—faced with the problem that German submarines were being replenished by “neutral” freighters in Argentina—could not come up with a better solution than sending a fighter pilot, an immigrant electrical engineer, and a none-too-bright Italian boy from Chicago who was allegedly a demolitions expert to deal with it.
If General Frade had been in charge, he would have dispatched several Boeing B-17 bombers to Brazil with orders to bomb any suspicious-looking ship; and if the Argentineans didn’t like it, fuck ’em. What were they going to do, declare war on the United States and bomb Miami? If the OSS knew about the ship, they would certainly know where it was. And it shouldn’t be too hard to pass that information on to the bomber people.
On the other hand, it was also very true that the B-17s, the only aircraft Clete knew of with range enough to bomb Buenos Aires from a base in Brazil, weren’t the invincible flying fortresses the Army Air Corps was advertising. B-17s had bravely gone out day after day from Midway and Henderson and Espíritu Santo to bomb Japanese ships; and so far as Clete knew, they hadn’t been able to hit one of them.
They’d lost a bunch of B-17s—either to Japanese fighters, pilot (or navigator) error, or lousy maintenance. At least some of the Seventeen pilots must have known they were pissing into the wind, but they kept their mouths shut and tried to do what was asked of them, because that was the way things are in a war.
And that’s how he felt about blowing up “neutral” freighters in Argentina. He would give it a shot—and for that matter, even try to make friends with his father—because that was what he had been ordered to do. Phony discharge and draft card and civilian clothing aside, he was still a serving Marine Officer. He’d taken an oath to “faithfully execute the orders of those officers appointed him”; and simply because orders like these weren’t what he expected to get didn’t release him from that oath.
All he could do was hope that “faithfully executing” his orders wasn’t going to get himself—and Pelosi and Ettinger—killed in the process. And considering that the sum total of his knowledge about how to be a successful secret agent could be written inside a matchbook with a crayon—despite the mind-numbing, day-and-night, relentless efforts of the mentors in New Orleans—getting killed did not seem an unlikely possibility.
Ettinger seemed both smart and tough. Even telling his mother that he was going to Argentina now seemed less stupid than it did when Clete first heard it and ate him out about it. He had to tell her something, obviously, and in the absence of a furnished cover story—the OSS left things out, forgot things…this was obviously not a comforting thought—the one he came up with was a pretty good one. And someone who had lost his family to Hitler’s goons didn’t have to be reminded that the Germans were the bad guys.
Pelosi worried him more. Sure he knew his stuff, incredibly…. Lieutenant Greene, the Navy Salvage officer, gave Pelosi practice setting charges on a ship by giving him a to-be-scrapped World War One destroyer to blow up. Greene came back from Mississippi damned near glowing with tales of his expertise. But Pelosi was a Second Lieutenant, a kid, who thought war was like they showed it in Alan Ladd and Errol Flynn movies. Based on his own recent experience in the role, Clete considered himself an expert about the stupidíty of second lieutenants. And he was thus afraid that Pelosi would try to do something heroic—an excellent way to get yourself and the people with you killed.
When the opportunity presented itself—the mentors saw to it there was no time for that in New Orleans—he intended to have a long talk with Pelosi on the theme that discretion is often the better part of valor.
The mentors also ruined his plans to correct what was now a near-terminal case of Lackanookie. Finding a cure for that was the one thing he could reasonably expect to find in Buenos Aires. Three of their mentors had been there. They swore to a man that the women were both lovely and (sometimes) willing.
He remembered clearly very few of the nine million facts about Buenos Aires that they threw at him. But one of those few concerned Four Hour Hotels. Four Hour Hotels were set up for the express purpose of catering to unmarried people who wished to spend four hours alone together in a horizontal position without their clothes. That seemed to be a little too good to be true, but he was going to do his best to find out for himself.
Another steward came down the aisle, carrying a tray of glasses and a bottle of champagne wrapped in a napkin.
Clete nudged Pelosi, who was dozing in the seat beside him, waking him, and noting with surprise how his face was astonishingly dark with whiskers. Pan American had provided razors, but they both chose not to use them. Since it was unlikely either of them was going to be kissed on board, shaves could wait until they got to Buenos Aires.
Pelosi had a questioning look. And a hint of annoyance, as well.
“Champagne,” Clete said.
“What are we celebrating?”
“Our arrival.”
“Champagne, gentlemen?” the steward asked as he reached them.
“Thank you ever so much, and you can leave the bottle,” Clete said.
The Martin set down into choppy water with a series of crashes. Water sprayed over the windows, so the seaplane was nearly stopped before Clete could look past Pelosi and see outside. The water was dirty. Or at least brown.
The seaplane turned, and the pilot shut down its engines. Punctuated only by the clangs of cooling metal and the lapping of water against the hull, the quiet felt strange. Then a string of boats appeared: The first four were outsize motorboats, with brightly varnished woodwork. And after them, in line, came four work boats, to take off the luggage and cargo. Clete had seen them load mailbags aboard in Miami and in Rio de Janeiro.
He wondered idly if there was other cargo. It must cost a fortune to ship something air express, if that’s what it’s called. The bill for our tickets was more than the Marine Corps is paying me by the year as a first lieutenant on flight status.
There was a flurry in the cabin as the passengers—thirty-six of them, thirty-four of them male, he had counted—started getting ready to get off. Pelosi saw them too, and began to get up.
Clete waved him back into his seat, and pointed out the window. The first of the passenger boats was still far from the Martin. No one would be getting off in the next couple of minutes.
Finally, they opened the door, and there was the smell of fresh air. And it was warm. The temperature rose quickly. He was sweating by the time it was their turn to pass through the hatch and step onto what looked like a stubby second wing, and from that down to one of the powerboats.
The ride to shore cooled them off.
It’s no hotter here than it was in Miami, Clete decided. Maybe a little more humid.